Question: So, why is wine aged in oak barrels?
Answer: Partly, it’s tradition. More important, however, are all the benefits that oak brings to wine. It helps protect the wine from spoilage, stabilizes color, and adds desirable flavors & texture.
Oak contains compounds called tannins, which suppress bacterial growth, scavenge oxygen, and give wine additional silky rich mouth-feel. These and other beneficial compounds from the oak are slowly leached out into the wine as it ages. In order to achieve the ideal characteristics, a very long “cooperage” (barrel-making) process must be accomplished.
Before the oak planks are made into barrels, they are stacked and aged 2-3 years outdoors in the elements to make the “woody” flavors more desirable and subtle. After the barrels are constructed, the inner surface is toasted using various methods. Traditionally, a small fire made by burning oak scraps is used. The “cooper” (barrel maker) slowly and carefully spins the open-ended new cask over the flames, toasting the oak staves to bring out flavors of caramel, vanilla, and spices such as cinnamon and cloves. Different toasting methods can vary the amounts and mix of flavors, allowing the winemaker to choose among various barrel brands in order to give a particular wine the perfect complimentary oak flavors.
Oak wine barrels are made using either European (including French) or American oak. European and American oak trees are different species, so the wood has slightly different characteristics. European oak barrels tend to add more subtle flavors, with higher amounts of vanilla and caramel. American oak is generally spicier, with bolder toasty flavors of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. Winemakers use these differences when choosing barrels for a given wine.
Heavier wines such as Syrah and Zinfandel do quite nicely in American oak. Lighter wines including Pinot Noir and Sangiovese are more often put into French/European barrels so that the wood does not overpower the wine. Sometimes, however, with wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon that can be quite heavy, French oak is usually preferred since the vanilla and caramel aromas are a nice complement to Cab’s dark & herbal notes. The barrel provides balance, elegance, and enhances fruit aromas. The wine to barrel marriage is very important, and we at Wiens test numerous combinations before deciding which matches do best.
So, the next time you’re in the barrel room, take a moment to study the different types of barrels. They truly are the winemaker’s spice rack!
Question: This bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon tastes like bell
peppers, what the heck is that?
Answer: Vegetable-like or grassy flavors are fairly common in some
Bordeaux varietals including Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot,
and Sauvignon Blanc. These types of grapes have naturally occurring levels of
a family of chemical compounds called pyrazines, which are the source of the
flavor. In very small amounts, pyrazines can add complexity and make a wine
more interesting. If there’s too much, however, the wine can be unpleasant
and unbalanced, with any fruit flavors suppressed and masked by the veggieness.
So, how do winemakers limit pyrazines in their wines? It all happens in the
vineyard by managing grapevine canopy size & density, and by allowing the
grapes to fully ripen before harvest. It takes sunlight on the grape clusters to
develop nice fruity flavors, and lack of sunlight will favor vegetative flavors.
Vineyard canopies (a term for the collective vine & leaf portion of the vines)
that are very large, overgrown, and dense will yield poorer flavored fruit. By
cutting back on irrigation water, fertilizing less, and doing dormant pruning
to control canopy size, grape quality (and hence wine quality) is improved
because more sunlight reaches the clusters. In addition, the vineyard
manager might decide in the springtime to thin out some vine shoots or
even pull off some leaves in the fruiting zone to allow more sun penetration.
Now you may ask, why don’t all vineyard managers do these things if they will make their grapes better? Money, of course!
Intense vineyard management practices not only cost more in labor, but also result in lower fruit yields. If the vineyard is not
owned, controlled or at least strongly influenced by the winery & winemaker, the natural tendency on the vineyard side is to get
the highest grape tonnage possible with the lowest possible cost of production. Cheap wines are made from cheap grapes, which
is why a $5 - $10 bottle of Cabernet is more likely to taste like vegetables than a $30+ bottle.
Question: Hey, what's that crud in the bottom of my wine?
Answer: Believe it or not, it's often a sign that the wine is very good! Wine is a wonderful combination of thousands of natural components and essences. The best wines generally have higher concentrations of the things that make wine good – flavors, pigments, fruit acids, polysaccharides, tannins, and alcohol all add to the sensory experience elicited by the finest wines.
You may have noticed that I didn't say anything about wine containing bits of stem, leaves, seeds, grape skin, or shards of glass! Only in the most extremely remote, unusual, mistake of circumstance would any of these contaminants ever find their way through the maze of screening, racking, fining, testing, and filtering and into a wine bottle. The vast majority of sediment in wine is formed from natural chemical reactions AFTER bottling.
So, back to the question. Most often, the sediment in wine bottles is largely potassium bitartrate (same as "cream of tartar" used in cooking, which is commercially derived from wine). Bitartrate forms when tartaric acid, the major fruit acid in wine, changes to an insoluble salt form in the presence of alcohol and low temperatures. When the wine is first bottled, the tartaric acid is completely soluble and unseen. After time, especially if the wine is held under cold conditions, the tartrates take on a crystalline, insoluble form and fall to the bottom (or to the top if the bottle is stored inverted). These are often the chunks you see. They are harmless. They are also insoluble, so shaking will just temporarily suspend them and not eliminate them. They will end up in EVERY poured glass instead of just the last!
In highly extracted wines, and wines made from intensively farmed grapes, the tartrate crystals are often joined by aggregated particles of other wine components. These too are harmless, and can be an indicator of a "big" wine. Europeans are very tolerant of sediment, perhaps thinking of it as a sign that the wine is minimally processed. Americans, on the other hand, generally view any particles in wine as a defect. This difference in opinion might stem from the fact that Americans tend to consume their wines with little aging, while European wines are more often aged for several years, giving the particles more time to form.
The best way to eliminate the sediment is to either decant the wine carefully from the bottle into a decanter prior to serving, or simply pour all glasses (especially the last) slowly and leave the final half ounce or so of wine along with the sediment in the bottom of the bottle.
